Applied Systems Design and Thinking

Systems make the water you drink, the health care you access, the businesses you work in, and the products you buy. Yet as a society, we tend to promote siloed and linear thinking that contributes to rising challenges facing these systems and others. In this course, we aim to shift this paradigm by positioning (good) system design as the outcome of rewiring our mental models to see everything as systems. System design and the cognitive approach of systems thinking plays a critical role in developing holistic and sustainable solutions to problems faced in the many systems in our society. Throughout the semester, students learn and implement the methodologies and frameworks of a systems thinker to analyze, design, and measure systems and their effectiveness. Students refine their ability to learn from others, identify the rich interconnections of systems, and generate alternative system designs and innovations through ongoing collaborative coursework. This is a course designed with the practitioner in mind, where tools learned today could be applied tomorrow. It requires that students embrace the process of striking a balance between rigidity and chaos, just like the world's best systems do.